You are not allowed to edit or use someone elses intellectual property without express permission.

Many people who make high quality works often only want derivitive works to be done in a certain way. They may say "no one else modify it" entirely.

So when you find something you want to modify, be very sure to dig around by using the forum search to see if you are allowed to modify it. Also download the pack and have a look for a readme or credits file which may provide this information.

It's always polite to message the original author where possible and let them know what you are doing.

Now, if you have permission, then you can start modding and most people use blender for that. I presume you know how to do that already? If not, get blender, watch decaff's tutorials, and practice on some stock aircraft until you are ready to paint your fleet.

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

So do you know how addons in YSFlight work? As in how DAT files, DNM's, SRF's, LST's etc. all work?

Crack them all open in a notepad and you'll start to put together how all this works. Seems like you've got a pretty good handle on it so far so I'll leave you with that unless you have more questions.

Also, Sierra, play nice. (CrankyPusheen.gif)

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

So do you know how addons in YSFlight work? As in how DAT files, DNM's, SRF's, LST's etc. all work?

Crack them all open in a notepad and you'll start to put together how all this works. Seems like you've got a pretty good handle on it so far so I'll leave you with that unless you have more questions.

Also, Sierra, play nice. (CrankyPusheen.gif)

Yes i know how to add addons and scenery and such

Working on familiarizing myself again with how everything is put together i know dnms are the models however its been a while since i messed around with 2.49 i have been working in 2.79 most of my days but i could use some pointers to jog my memory again on how things are done the dats were probably the most difficult for me in the beginning. I have scowered through the forums looking for tools and export imports for dnms for 2.79 but i hurd it doesn't export animations correctly joins it all in the center? thats what decaff showed on hes pic on the post so i am pretty knowledgeable just need to get more in depth into it.

For DAT files, it's pretty much a "learn by doing" approach - change a value, take a test flight, see what happens. There is a library on what DAT variables there are in the forum, look in the addon creation section for a stick on that.

DNM animation, I personally use DNMViewer - there is an Engrish version out there and there's also a C# port of the program made by somone else - I can't quite recall the name but it has similar functionality. I personally build my model, color all the parts seperately and export them as individual srf files. I then combine the srf files in dnmviewer and then animate there. I was never very good at blender at all - i found the interface overly complicated for what I needed and the control inputs and key codes never really made sense. But somethings blender can do are essential - such as cutting edges and planes, so if you find decaffs videos on youtube I highly recommend following them as they are the gold standard for dnm and srf making now.

And that's pretty much the gist of it. If you have a poke around an SRF file, it's got vertex definitions at the top, then polygon definitions underneath that refer to each vertex by vertex number up above. The have colors defined here and sometimes you'll see "ZA" or "ZZ" lines for transparency effects.

Always feel free to ask any quick question in the mchat and I'm sure someone will come in to help.

I challenge you for now to make a simple addon: Copy and pack your own "addon pack" consisting of just one aircraft - modify any one you choose, say stock f-22, and color it dark black (C 24 24 24) [Search replace in notepad or edit dnm in blender?], and change the performance to make it have a lot of power and top speed.

If you can accomplish that, then you're well on your way to understanding the ysflight files and being able to make your pack. This can be done in less than 30 minutes total if you're fast and skilled at it. Most of that editing will be the color change.

I might make a video of this tomorrow if I can actually...

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

Awesome thank you Flake i actually have spent all day just modeling and learning the ropes of ysflights modeling animations. I dunno why it takes 2 hours to learn something when after it looks so easy but i guess thats how it is haha.

Speaking of blender i love it lol i actually had issues with 2.49 being super slow and lagging and i was like o hell no not when i have come so close so with 1 hour of researching i came across a driver update for graphics that did the trick and i was able to use drm viewer and animate my first ailerons and flaps. Keeping this up i am gonna be addicted my creativity unleashed and knowing how to implement and apply the things i have in mind oh i cant WAIT from cockpit animations to special features skys the limit i wanna really see what i can do. Thanks for the Support!!

Just regarding cockpit animations - somethings you can do and some things you can't.

There is no CLA for throttle position for example, but there is a CLA for low/hi propeller speed. So you can't make a sliding throttle but you can have a binary throttle, or semi-binary throttle that's back for low power and forward for high power. The stick you can assign CLA's for elevator and aileron nested together. Flaps can be animated of course, and so can the landing gear, bomb bay etc. Anything that can be animated on the model, you can assign the same animation type for the parts of the cockpit.

If you really want to bake your noodle on how complex animations can get when you nest them together, have a look at the ASIMO model in DNM Viewer. You can also have a look at how TF58 made the strobe lights on his 747's.

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

To Flake awsome thanks brother I have been looking into cla codes for specific animation sets which definitely give me a list of available features as for dat I opened up some data that fo example had features such as extra camera and specific cla types to see how its coded into the aircraft from the .srf and .dnm but I am going to dissect and as far as your challenge yes I believe that would be a great way to start by recolor and adding a perk to see how it functions so I will go ahead and do that thank you.

TO Decaff thank you so much for your video series also I love watching and you have done an amazing job at compiling category's to be simple it really helped me out with learning how to animate for example.
I am more a visual learner so text sometimes is hard for me me but for all you guys your points and suggestions are valued and I am working on getting more familiar with development and I'd be more then happy to test everything I can to bring a very powerful example of possibilities to aircraft development.

And I will be more then happy to look at that cockpit example decaf thank you for the tip

Ofcourse after this will be on to learning to get down to scenery creation

I'm definitely a visual learner. That's why trying to get through all the International Financial Reporting Standards and International Accounting Standards is just so damned hard for me - it's just paragraph after paragraph of convoluted sentences that would be better presented as bullet lists. Dry as heck.

Unfortunately, we don't often have the time to present this information in an easy to follow visual format.

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

I here you man thats why coding for me just becomes a bore because its just sentences and lines and lines of code but even tho its a very essential and good skill set to have you got to work with what your able to get through with.

Well Enthusiasm and Drive isn't without a Expiration button until your depression kicks in.

Hit a road bump looking into the Dat files thats alot of Non visual kind of jargen like code to me but i understand its functioning now its just the task of painstakingly going through and creating points for all aspects of animations and cameras...... This is were laziness and brain cramping begin.

to update Flake i have modified the stock f22 to have a different color as well as create a very simple custom cockpit for the stock f22 to test adding content as understand how modding works thats the easy part now the hard part is knowing how to implement each point correctly what do you use to measure the MM for the parts in the Dat do you set that up in DNM viewer or blender>??? Also was asking about transparent cockpit capability what is a trick to do so i was looking around and didnt quite see a post on how to make it transparent?

Update\ i also learned about how vertex color plays a role in making textures without the needs of adding millions of materials great trick definitely learned some fun things

It's a good question re: getting the measurements just right. We all have our creative ways. My way was to make a axis star and move it with dnmviewer. When I got it in just the right spot, I'd copy out the coordinates it was at. You can almost definitely do it much easier in blender though - copy the coordinates from that.

Great work so far, you're definitely progressing quickly and should be proud of your efforts.

To have a transparent cockpit file, just make a null.srf. You can do this by making a text file with SURF on the first line and E on the 2nd, then just save and rename to srf extension. Now just reference that SRF at the 4th position of your lst file, and voila, blank cockpit.

Oh and yeah, please don't double post in general - if you want to make your own WIP thread in the addon creation forum you can do it there though, and I encourage making a WIP thread anyway as it helps keep all your dev work in one place for you to look back on later. See my construction yard for example

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!

whats double posting? i dont understand i started this thread its my own its not going off of anyone's does it just mean a progress for updates if i keep adding more to it? sorry im not a forum guru knowing rules and such

If you need to bump a thread, edit your post, copy to the clip board, then delete it. Then make a new reply with the clipboard data and your bump information, and the post will be bumped to the top of active topics.

You are allowed to double post in your own WIP threads as that's "your space" - no one else is really browsing there but to get information about what you're working on, so whatever.

You can double post in forum games where it's been a while since the last reply.

But yeah generally try and avoid it if you can.

Not having a beef, but yeah do try to follow this. Also be sure to read the forum rules stickied as a global announcement - there are a few things that aren't so intuitive put in here.

I am an accountant working full-time (and some). I'm not here as often as I would like to be. Send a message if you need me. There are a few people in the community who can get in contact with me urgently if you need - don't be afraid to ask. I just don't check here as frequently as I used to. Sorry!